Sometimes, the stars of open access (OA) and student publishing align. Alignment generates academic journals of student works that are made freely accessible to all. Many institutions already support student journals, as this vast survey of the undergraduate publishing landscape shows. How can LIS students contribute our unique skills and perspectives to student publishing? And how would everyone involved benefit from such involvement? Adding Value In […]

Asking is more than professional networking, salary negotiating, or relationship building, though any of these can motivate or arise from asking. Neither are we talking about currying favor. For me, asking falls into three general categories: seeking information, requesting roles or resources, and interrogating assumptions. Asking empowers new professionals to gain […]

Are you ready to become a tweetbrarian? Twitter is a fantastic tool for engaging with other librarians, monitoring LIS trends and debates in real time, and gathering unfiltered insights and inspiration from peers and seasoned professionals. The challenge for new tweeters is to know where to start among the 5,000 librarylanders on Twitter! So […]

Are you a Wikibrarian? I recently became one—a librarian who edits Wikipedia (“the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”)—and I have found the experience rewarding in the extreme. I have even stumbled into a role as an embedded consultant, helping faculty teach undergrads how to write Wikipedia articles on gender history, on which improvements are […]

My mentor recently forwarded me a thrilling job ad for a solo librarian at the Charles Darwin Research Station, located in Ecuador’s beautiful Galápagos Islands. As the only professional librarian present, the successful candidate would get to do digital curation, cataloging, collection development, reference, budget planning, staff management, and ILS […]

Skype interviews are my favorite! Lo and behold my supplement to Brianna Marshall’s exceptional Phone Interview Strategies. The genesis of this post is when I presented a paper via Skype at the Graduate History Forum at UNC Charlotte in April 2013. It was a great experience! I’ve been Skyping ever since. […]

Hello, hackers! Do you have a digital PLN? If not, this post will explain the concept and share some tips for success. I discovered the concept of the digital PLN (a web-based personal or professional learning network) through an information literacy instruction class I took in Fall 2013. One of […]

Why so serious? For aspiring librarians, attitude is all-important. Many of us eat up our days doing internships and day jobs, writing papers, presenting at conferences, and networking our hearts out on Twitter. This kind of workload makes us run the risk of stress, frustration, disillusionment—even burnout, especially if we […]